Skull Session by
Daniel Hecht
hbk out May 98
Published by Macmillan
at £16.99
This unusual first novel straddles several genres - crime, science fiction and the psychological thriller. Paul Skoglund suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome, a condition that drives its sufferers to extravagant mood swings and forces them to blurt out inappropriate words. Despite his many talents, he has lost both his wife and his promising career; he is trying to hold on to his son Mark and his girlfriend Lia. Then comes an offer from an eccentric aunt: she wants him to renovate her enormous hunting lodge in the Hudson valley, a decaying and partly vandalised gothic pile which has seen more than its fair share of bizarre deaths.
These ingredients give little hint of what is in store. SKULL SESSION is a rich and complex novel which explores the disputed border territory between madness and medicine. And it has an exceptionally good jacket, too. On the other hand, the book is slow-moving, perhaps over-long, and asks its readers to accept a protagonist with not merely one rare condition but two.
Nevertheless SKULL SESSION builds to a splendidly melodramatic climax. The quality of the writing sometimes has parallels with Donna Tartt’s Secret History. Hecht is clearly a writer of distinctive and unusual talent - one to watch.
(
Andrew Taylor
- author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series)
Skull Session by
Daniel Hecht